INDIO, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 13: (FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY) (L-R) John Mayer performs with Zedd at the Outdoor Theatre during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 13, 2025 in Indio, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coachella)
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coachella
Musician and songwriter John Mayer is a fascinating listen on his eponymous SiriusXM channel (14). Much as he treasures the early songs he wrote, recorded, and that made him famous, Mayer is clear that he couldn’t write those songs today.
Explicit in Mayer’s clarity is not that he doesn’t once again not treasure his past work, but that the John Mayer who wrote and released “No Such Thing” in 2002 and “Waiting On the World To Change” in 2006 is no longer that John Mayer. Such is the effect of writing. In putting pen to paper whether for music, movie scripts, fiction, non-fiction, and even personal letters, the person we were is not the person we are.
It’s useful to think about as questions start to emerge about musical recordings. The expectation is that artificial intelligence (AI) will start to have an impact on the music we listen to. At first glance, this is a statement of the obvious.
Technological advances generally accentuate our work. Music wouldn’t, nor should it be different. As you’re reading this, artists are already utilizing AI tools in the way that we all use technology to improve our output.
Just the same, no artist would ever use AI to write his or her music. See Mayer yet again. The genius of all compositions is in the writing. Furthemore, it would be existential to his career.
To grasp what you’ve just read, see Madonna, see Bob Dylan, see the Beatles. It’s not just that all three evolved as artists in the way that Mayer is today, and that reflected their relationship with the thoughts and music that inform their tunes, it’s that they had to evolve. In all walks of commercial life, stasis is the path to commercial obsolescence.
Which brings us to the Billboard Charts. Since musical AIs can either be trained to a specific artist, artists, or every song ever released, there’s an enormous amount of content for the AIs to work with. Should this chart?
The answer is no. Lest we forget, this isn’t composition as much as AI is ultimately “math.” And the math that’s utilized to create music is an effect of the work of others. This is true for all AIs. And that’s not a knock on the AIs. It’s a compliment. They’re a literal miracle as they mathematically incorporate all that’s been done previously.
Stop and think of what this means for all of us, including musicians. They now have access to what’s been done previously, and they can build on it. And they do build on it. See the myriad ways that the recently passed Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” has been re-recorded. Which is the point.
A song that began as country has been used for punk, new wave, basic rock ‘n roll, along with techno. It’s that evolution that’s been routinely referenced here.
Applied to AI generated music, it’s not composed as much as composers made it. For it to chart would imply that literally anyone can take what’s been previously made, re-record it, only to claim AI did it and the music is theirs. Except that it wouldn’t be. Musical AIs are the mathematical creation of work previously done.
Which means it wouldn’t just be dishonest for Billboard to chart AI generated music explicitly lifted from others without attribution, it would also be self-defeating. If you’re confused, consider Mayer, Madonna, Dylan, and the Beatles yet again. They’re no longer what they wrote not just because songwriting itself mirrors individual evolution, but because remaining what they were would be the path to no longer having an audience.
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